Daphne Bramham: Is $1 billion for a BC museum any more ridiculous than the millions (and billions) spent on sports?

Article content

Stacked against urgent problems of a family doctor shortage, an ongoing pandemic, the seemingly endless epidemic of overdose deaths, and a stunning lack of affordable housing, I get it that $1 billion for a provincial museum is an awful lot of money.

Article content

But it’s curious that the museum is such a lightning rod of discontent when other big-ticket, discretionary items have been greeted either with yawns or a “good-on-ya-boys.”

Let’s work our way up the money list, starting with the 2025 Invictus Games.

Premier John Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in May that each government will put up $15 million for the eight-day games that feature war veterans. Trudeau said it would be “uniquely Canadian” because for the first time, alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, skeleton and wheelchair curling will be included. And, for $30 million of public money, British Columbians might even catch a glimpse of the event’s founder, Prince Harry.

On June 16, we will find out whether Vancouver has been chosen to host three to five of the 2026 FIFA World Cup games played over a month. The estimated cost of planning, staging and hosting those matches is between $240 million and $260 million, according to Melanie Mark, BC’s minister of tourism, arts, culture and sport.

Article content

Mark said she hoped some of that money will come from Ottawa, and the city has pledged $5 million. Only four years ago, the premier rejected the idea as far too expensive. Now, his government projects the spinoff benefits at $1 billion over five years — much more than what was predicted (but did not materialize) from the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

That leads us to the 2030 Winter Olympics, which for now only Olympic officials and politicians seem to be talking about. A preliminary cost guess-timate is that it won’t be less than $2 billion US based on other competitors’ predictions.

Because Salt Lake City, Sapporo and Barcelona are also planning, like Vancouver, to reuse facilities built for previous Games, their estimates shouldn’t be wildly out of line with costs here. But notably, that $2 billion doesn’t include security costs, which were $1 billion for Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics. Since then, the world has only become more dangerous.

Article content

All of the “exploratory” costs of the bid have been borne by the Canadian Olympic Committee. And so far, it has refused to give the public a glimpse of the “Games concept” beyond the basics. The bid will be led by Squamish, Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Lil’wat First Nations, and is intended to fit into Canada’s commitments to reconciliation.

But a lot is happening behind closed doors at City Hall and in Victoria. On April 28, four senior bureaucrats from Mark’s ministry met with Andrew Baker, who heads the COC’s exploratory committee, and consultant Mary Conibear.

According to the BC Lobbyists Registry report, they asked for government staff to help build the Games concept. Beyond that, the registry report says Baker told them that “should a Games concept evolve into a successful bid, it could impact a host of government policies, including Indigenous relations, the environment, housing, economic development and others.”

Article content

Details of the plan were shared last month with the International Olympic Committee’s technical team during a site visit.

Meanwhile, Vancouver council firmly shut the door in April to even debate whether to hold a plebiscite on the Games. Baker did promise to publicly reveal the plan sometime in June. But that’s a month later than earlier promised, and only five months before the IOC’s November deadline for confirming the bid.

The silence seems more cynical than coincidental.

Until it held a plebiscite, Calgary was considered a shoe-in for the 2026 Winter Games. The city quashed the bid by withdrawing its support after 56.4 per cent of Calgarians voted no.

Before the vote, the city held public and online meetings and engaged close to 80,000 people. After that, it reported that 85 per cent of participants were concerned that the $5.1-billion cost (shared by the governments and the private sector) was too high and the benefits questionable. They suggested the money would be better spent on other priorities.

Article content

Barring the four host First Nations and its citizens stopping the process and no political appetite in Vancouver for a plebiscite, Vancouver is widely expected to get the Games.

So, back to the museum. There is little to suggest that before the design work has even started that it makes economic sense to close the Royal BC Museum that, pre-pandemic, had 880,000 visitors a year. As with all the sporting events, the heavily redacted business case provided no detailed cost-benefit analysis. But the museum does have 1,307 full-time staff both locally and provincially and generates $242.3 million in local economic spinoffs, according to the BC government.

Beyond that, to 2019 report by Oxford Economics concluded that for every dollar invested in museums, society gets nearly $4 in return. It quoted Canadian surveys in which 96 per cent of respondents said museums improved people’s quality of life and 92 per cent said they are important to children’s education.

Article content

So, is spending $1 billion on a museum whose life expectancy is measured in decades, not days, any more ridiculous than potentially spending more than double that on the 2030 Olympics, or a quarter of a billion on five World Cup soccer games? I don’t know.

But it sure would be nice if citizens and taxpayers at least had a chance to talk about it before politicians put them on the hook for nice-to-have, but not essential expenditures.

[email protected]

More news, fewer ads: Our in-depth journalism is possible thanks to the support of our subscribers. For just $3.50 per week, you can get unlimited, ad-lite access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.